Is DS capable of writing business applications fast?

Hi!

I'm thinking about evaluating Dolphin Smalltalk for the construction
of a small business application for the Windows platform which I might
need to write.  I'd love to get comments on the questions raised
below.

I know Smalltalk very well and I also know Dolphin Smalltalk, but I
wonder what's available beside the base tools.  

My application will probably consist (as most application) of four
parts: storage,  presentation,  workflow and reporting.

To store data, I could imagine either a relational database or some
OODB.  As the amount and structure of the data is still very unclear,
whatever solution I'll choose, the database schema must be easily
changeable.

I found MinneStore as a free OODB.  I know DS Professional comes with
ODBC support.  MinneStore looks nice, but is very slow in saving
objects (as each object gets its own file) and furthermore, my second
test case lead to a recusion-too-deep-exception in the STBFiler code.
I also worry whether you can really change the structure of old
objects.

Is there any Object-relational-mapper available which helps to store
an object model into an RDB?

I see no problems with the UI (presentation) and workflow stuff.
Actually, I think, Smalltalk will help me to implement the latter
faster.

Will DS be supported on XP?  

I can seamlessly embedd an IE5 into the UI, can't I?

Currently, me biggest concern is printing.  I need to generate and
print different letters, orders, tabular inventories and so on.  If
possible at all, I don't want to use an expensive, separately to
install third party product like crystal reports.

The application should have no administration overhead and should run
right from the CD if possible.

So are there any solutions written in DS for database access and/or
printing?


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust \/ Truth Until Paradox

Stefan:

I am also interested in this area, and look forward to the answers you get.
Concerning Minnestore - have you looked at Omnibase www.gorisek.com?
I think there may also be an OR mapping to PostgreSQL

Mike

"Stefan Matthias Aust" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

Stefan Matthias Aust <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
>
> Is there any Object-relational-mapper available which helps to store
> an object model into an RDB?

I have been using ReStore ( http://www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore/ ) for the
past few weeks, and I am very impressed with it.  It is a very comprehensive
implementation.  Using the system is almost transparent.  At a minimum you
have to add a class method to your persistent classes to define how they
should be stored.  The database tables are defined by the class structure,
and it changes as your classes change.  The price and features are great.
The service is also excellent.  I will be using it for a big project in the
near future.

> Will DS be supported on XP?

I sure hope so. ;)  I think Andy or Blair can confirm that.

> Currently, me biggest concern is printing.  I need to generate and
> print different letters, orders, tabular inventories and so on.  If
> possible at all, I don't want to use an expensive, separately to
> install third party product like crystal reports.

This is going to be an issue for me as well.  I am not currently sure how I
will handle this.  I think I will end up using Crystal Reports unless I can
find a better approach.  I am under the impression that the Crystal Reports
engine can be integrated into an application in a somewhat seamless way.  I
would be interested to know what you end up using.

> The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> right from the CD if possible.

This _might_ be a problem with Dolphin.  I believe it requires that some
DLLs be installed and registered.  Perhaps someone knows a way around this.
If you do have to develop a setup program consider using Inno Setup
 http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm ), it is free and has all the right
features.  Someone previously recommended it here, and it does exactly what
I need.

Chris

Stefan,

"Stefan Matthias Aust" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
[...]
> To store data, I could imagine either a relational database or some[...]

I've been using ADO (with Dolphin-generated wrappers) with SQL Server 7 and
Access 2000.  Both work quite nicely, although I've had to add a number of
methods to make it (ADO) less annoying to use.  Depending on whether you need
any of the features of ADO as opposed to ODBC (e.g., some cursor types are only
available in ADO), you might want to use the Database Connection.  Of course,
my data fits pretty well into tables.  That, plus the need for an ad hoc
front-end like Access (and we already have both Access and SQL Server), pretty
much ruled any OODB we could affort (i.e., OmniBase).  I plan to come up with
with a good excuse to get that eventually, though.

[...]
> I can seamlessly embedd an IE5 into the UI, can't I?

Yes.  I've been using the DHTMLEdit control (IE 5.5?), but if you don't need
any editing capability, the WebBrowser2 stuff that OA includes seems pretty
much ready to use.

[...]
> Currently, me biggest concern is printing.  I need to generate and
> print different letters, orders, tabular inventories and so on.  If
> possible at all, I don't want to use an expensive, separately to
> install third party product like crystal reports.

If HTML works, IE gives you a lot of printing capabilities, including preview,
although control over page layout is admittedly limited.

[...]
> The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> right from the CD if possible.
That shouldn't be a problem.  IIRC, I think that Windows has been smart enought
to look in the (application's) current directory for DLLs since Win 95 or
thereabouts.

[...]
> Stefan Matthias Aust \/ Truth Until Paradox

HTH

Don

Stefan:

What are your thoughts on Restore for a rank beginner in OODB design?  Would
it be approachable in the
same way that Dolphin is.  Another concern I have with these smaller OODB is
potential problems with
their persistence in the market.  It wouldn't do to build your app on an
OODB that disappeared.

Mike

"Christopher J. Demers" <[hidden email]> wrote in
message news:9l9a7b$84m84$[hidden email]...
> Stefan Matthias Aust <[hidden email]> wrote in message
> news:[hidden email]...
> >
> > Is there any Object-relational-mapper available which helps to store
> > an object model into an RDB?
>
> I have been using ReStore ( http://www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore/ ) for
the
> past few weeks, and I am very impressed with it.  It is a very
comprehensive
> implementation.  Using the system is almost transparent.  At a minimum you
> have to add a class method to your persistent classes to define how they
> should be stored.  The database tables are defined by the class structure,
> and it changes as your classes change.  The price and features are great.
> The service is also excellent.  I will be using it for a big project in
the I
> will handle this.  I think I will end up using Crystal Reports unless I
can
> find a better approach.  I am under the impression that the Crystal
Reports
> engine can be integrated into an application in a somewhat seamless way.
I
> would be interested to know what you end up using.
>
> > The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> > right from the CD if possible.
>
> This _might_ be a problem with Dolphin.  I believe it requires that some
> DLLs be installed and registered.  Perhaps someone knows a way around
this.
> If you do have to develop a setup program consider using Inno Setup
>  http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm ), it is free and has all the right
> features.  Someone previously recommended it here, and it does exactly
what
> I need.
>
> Chris
>
>

Oops I see Restore is an OR mapping program, my mistake.  For that matter
have you looked at Glorp?
Mike
"Michael Chean" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Stefan:
>
> What are your thoughts on Restore for a rank beginner in OODB design?
Would
> it be approachable in the
> same way that Dolphin is.  Another concern I have with these smaller OODB
is you
> > have to add a class method to your persistent classes to define how they
> > should be stored.  The database tables are defined by the class
structure,
> > and it changes as your classes change.  The price and features are
great. how right
> > features.  Someone previously recommended it here, and it does exactly
> what
> > I need.
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
>
>

Stefan,

A partial reply:

> I found MinneStore as a free OODB.  I know DS Professional comes with
> ODBC support.  MinneStore looks nice, but is very slow in saving
> objects (as each object gets its own file) and furthermore, my second
> test case lead to a recusion-too-deep-exception in the STBFiler code.
> I also worry whether you can really change the structure of old
> objects.

I can't comment on MinneStore, but, I use STB in various situations and have
found it to be reliable.  Conversions are indeed possible; one simply needs
to write conversion methods.  I recommend using the "incremental approach"
that's illustrated in the base system.

Did you change a layout prior to encountering the stack overflow error?  If
so, you might want to try writing a converter method.  You might have to
resort to some tricks if you have different instance variable layouts all
claiming to be at STB version 0.  Rather than resort to hacks like that, you
might prefer to simply create a new database and change the STB version
number as you alter the layout so that the newer objects would report a
different version number.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

Hi Stefan,

I'd recommend OmniBase for an OODB. I haven't used it "in anger" but playing
around with it seemed to suggest that it was well implemented. OmniBase is
used as the repository in David Gorisek's Source Tracking System; an
ENVY-like multi-developer product which is also a steal at $75
(www.gorisek.com).

> Is there any Object-relational-mapper available which helps to store
> an object model into an RDB?

Yes, try ReStore, which seems to work well ( http://www.solutionsoft.co.uk).
I don't think the Camp Smalltalk GLORP project has been ported to Dolphin
yet.

> Will DS be supported on XP?

Yes.

> I can seamlessly embedd an IE5 into the UI, can't I?

Yes. The "Simple Web Browser" package does this as does the TipOfTheDay
window.

> Currently, me biggest concern is printing.  I need to generate and
> print different letters, orders, tabular inventories and so on.  If
> possible at all, I don't want to use an expensive, separately to
> install third party product like crystal reports.

I have no real suggestions here.

> The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> right from the CD if possible.

You should be able to get your Dolphin app to run directly from the CD if
you include the VM in the same directory as the EXE. If there is no VM
registered on the user's computer this one should be found and used okay. If
you ever picked up one of the Dolphin 4.0 trial CDs you'll see that the
AutoPlay executable was written in Dolphin and executes directly from the CD
in this manner.

Best Regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
http://www.object-arts.com
---
Are you trying too hard?
http://www.object-arts.com/Relax.htm
---

Michael Chean <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Oops I see Restore is an OR mapping program, my mistake.  For that matter
> have you looked at Glorp?

I did try to look into Glorp.  When I looked at it it looked like it had not
been updated for a few months, and did not look like it was in a complete
state,  the status is "pre-alpha".  I also did not think there was a Dolphin
version available.

As I was in the process of considering different db options I heard about
ReStore.  The introductory price is $150, and it does just about everything
I need in an almost transparent way it was exactly what I was looking for.

I found it easy to use (even before the manual was released).  The class
determines the table structure, and it can create all the tables
automatically.  The resulting DB tables are easy to make sense of, so one
could use them to interface with other systems if needed or conceivably even
for direct reporting (like in Crystal Reports).  It uses transactions that
can be rolled back and can handle conflicts on a multi-user system.  It even
does some block parsing in order to avoid instantiating objects when
filtering in queries.  It is a very powerful system, but the user is
sheltered from most of the complexities.

I have not done any heavy lifting with ReStore yet, but I have been doing
some experiments using my objects to put it through its paces and so far I
am very pleased with it.  After I go through the motions of using it in a
real application, that will put it through some heavy lifting, I will post a
review in this group.

Chris

Michael Chean <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Oops I see Restore is an OR mapping program, my mistake.  For that matter
> have you looked at Glorp?

ReStore approaches the O-R mapping problem from a slightly different angle
to most other interfaces (including GLORP) by using your Smalltalk object
model as the basis for the DB schema. The advantage of this approach is that
the database structure is optimised for O-R mapping (although it is a
sensible database structure that other applications could easily interface
with). Also ReStore is able to automatically maintain the database as your
object model changes - a serious advantage, especially if you have limited
database experience.

For further details on ReStore, please see the FAQ:

http://www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore/faq


Regards,

John Aspinall
Solutions Software
www.solutionsoft.co.uk
www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore

Christopher J. Demers <[hidden email]> wrote:
> As I was in the process of considering different db options I heard about
> ReStore.  The introductory price is $150, and it does just about
everything
> I need in an almost transparent way it was exactly what I was looking for.

There's not much I can add to Chris' comments, except to say that ReStore is
configurable for most databases which have an ODBC driver. Out of the box,
there are configurations for MS Access and MySQL; other customers are using
SQL Server and PostgreSQL, and configurations for Oracle 7 and 8 are in
development.

Regards,

John Aspinall
Solutions Software
www.solutionsoft.co.uk
www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:9l9qb8$8a2pc$[hidden email]...
> ...
> > The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> > right from the CD if possible.
>
> You should be able to get your Dolphin app to run directly from the CD if
> you include the VM in the same directory as the EXE. If there is no VM
> registered on the user's computer this one should be found and used okay.
If
> you ever picked up one of the Dolphin 4.0 trial CDs you'll see that the
> AutoPlay executable was written in Dolphin and executes directly from the
CD
> in this manner.

For the sake of completeness I'll just mention that we forgot to include the
C runtime libraries (MSVCRT.DLL and MSVCIRT.DLL) on the trial CD, so it
doesn't autorun on systems where those are not installed (not common, given
the ubiquity of those DLLs, but it does occur). This is easily fixed though,
and if VM and CRT DLLs are on the CD then a Dolphin app. will run directly
off a CD as long as it doesn't use the Dolphin compiler at runtime. The
compiler still needs to be registered separately in the current release,
although it would be pretty easy to arrange for the application to register
it.

You can read about the complete installation requirements in the education
centre:
http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/EducationCentre4/htm/distributingyourapplicat
ion.htm

Regards

Blair

Don -

I'm curious to hear more about your experience with the DHTMLEdit control -
we have been using WebBrowser to display HTML reports, but are interested in
getting basic HTML editing into our application.  Are you using this control
to provide the user with HTML editing?  What were your experiences?

TIA -

Jeff Odell

"Don Rylander" <[hidden email]> wrote in
message news:9l9e9u$8am0o$[hidden email]...
> Stefan,
>
> "Stefan Matthias Aust" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
> news:[hidden email]...
> [...]
> > To store data, I could imagine either a relational database or some[...]
>
> I've been using ADO (with Dolphin-generated wrappers) with SQL Server 7
and
> Access 2000.  Both work quite nicely, although I've had to add a number of
> methods to make it (ADO) less annoying to use.  Depending on whether you
need
> any of the features of ADO as opposed to ODBC (e.g., some cursor types are
only
> available in ADO), you might want to use the Database Connection.  Of
course,
> my data fits pretty well into tables.  That, plus the need for an ad hoc
> front-end like Access (and we already have both Access and SQL Server),
pretty
> much ruled any OODB we could affort (i.e., OmniBase).  I plan to come up
with
> with a good excuse to get that eventually, though.
>
> [...]
> > I can seamlessly embedd an IE5 into the UI, can't I?
>
> Yes.  I've been using the DHTMLEdit control (IE 5.5?), but if you don't
need
> any editing capability, the WebBrowser2 stuff that OA includes seems
pretty
> much ready to use.
>
> [...]
> > Currently, me biggest concern is printing.  I need to generate and
> > print different letters, orders, tabular inventories and so on.  If
> > possible at all, I don't want to use an expensive, separately to
> > install third party product like crystal reports.
>
> If HTML works, IE gives you a lot of printing capabilities, including
preview,
> although control over page layout is admittedly limited.
>
> [...]
> > The application should have no administration overhead and should run
> > right from the CD if possible.
> That shouldn't be a problem.  IIRC, I think that Windows has been smart
enought

Jeff,
"Jeffrey Odell" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:3b78c3fe$[hidden email]...
> Don -
>
> I'm curious to hear more about your experience with the DHTMLEdit control -
> we have been using WebBrowser to display HTML reports, but are interested in
> getting basic HTML editing into our application.  Are you using this control
> to provide the user with HTML editing?  What were your experiences?
I just started using it a few weeks ago, and coding has become a small part of
my job these days, so that doesn't amount to much experience with it.  It's
nice to have what's essentially a full-fledged word processor to embed in your
application, though.  I started out using the IE stuff based on the way OA did
it for tips, where you just set the document's HTML as an "about:" URL, but
quickly got beyond the URL's maximum length (somewhere between 1 and 2K,
IIRC--the control doesn't give an error, by the way).  The only real issue I've
had with the control is that I wish its document object model were available
sooner.  It's not there until the window is fully created, so you need to be a
bit careful.  You can always set the documentHTML property of the control, but
that seems to result in the creation of a new DOM, which isn't always what you
want.

The other thing is that the MSHTML package is huge, over 7MB.  For that reason,
I switched back to doing my initial rudimentary word processing (bullets,
indentation, heading styles, etc.) stuff in a multiline text edit.  It also
makes it easier to confirm that I've set tags correctly.  It's probably not a
good idea to spend too much time heading down that path, though, since I think
most of what I want is already done in the MSHTML stuff.

HTH

Don
>
> TIA -
>
> Jeff Odell

John:
This sounds very interesting.  Its hard to get a clear picture of it from
the web page, but I will look at it again.
Are you happy with the speed of data access using ReStore as a OR layer?
I've had mixed results using ODBC.
Without a doubt its slower than Visual Foxpro native tables.  Can I ask what
size tables you'll be dealing with?

Mike

"John Aspinall" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:9laqd7$8ag1q$[hidden email]...
> Michael Chean <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Oops I see Restore is an OR mapping program, my mistake.  For that
matter
> > have you looked at Glorp?
>
> ReStore approaches the O-R mapping problem from a slightly different angle
> to most other interfaces (including GLORP) by using your Smalltalk object
> model as the basis for the DB schema. The advantage of this approach is
that

Mike,

> This sounds very interesting.  Its hard to get a clear picture of it from
> the web page, but I will look at it again.

Please feel free to email me off list if you have any specific questions. As
a quick summary, with ReStore you can add relational persistency to your
Dolphin application by defining just one method per class - ReStore will
then create your table structure when you tell it to synchronizeAllClasses.

This is in contrast to a traditional O-R mapping tool where you would need
to create the tables yourself and define a mapping between those and your
Dolphin classes - and then manually keep the two in sync.

> Are you happy with the speed of data access using ReStore as a OR layer?
> I've had mixed results using ODBC.

I've not noticed any problems with the databases I use most of the time
(Access and MySQL). The performance overhead of ReStore itself is fairly
minimal; overall performance will depend primarily on the database and the
ODBC driver. As a very rough guide, for the following simple class:

Object subclass: #Person
    instanceVariableNames: 'surname firstName emailAddress'

...it takes around 1.5 seconds to create and insert 1000 instances into an
Access database (running on the same 800MHz machine as the image). Reading
back and instantiating the instances takes 260ms. The figures for MySQL are
similar, with creation being slightly faster.

This isn't really a very representative test, however - in general ReStore
accesses the database on demand as you traverse your object model, so
interaction tends to be frequent, with smaller amounts of data.

> Without a doubt its slower than Visual Foxpro native tables.  Can I ask
> what size tables you'll be dealing with?

I've no direct experience with Foxpro. As for table sizes, my test cases
vary from the very simple (e.g. the above) to more comprehensive tests
covering all possible datatypes and relationships. If you have anything
specific in mind, please let me know.

Regards,

John Aspinall
Solutions Software
www.solutionsoft.co.uk
www.solutionsoft.co.uk/restore